XDA News Articles

When HTC officially announced the HTC Explorer, they most likely weren't thinking that this device will be such popular handset. The device which originally shipped with the Android 2.3.5 is still in use by many--and rather unsurprisingly, the Explorer received an initial, unofficial port of CyanogenMod 12 based on Android 5.0 Lollipop. To make this happen, XDA Recognized Contributor kirmaniarslan used resources provided by TeamHackLG and LegacyXperia groups. After adding a bunch of patches to adapt this archaic platform to Android...

Some older devices have a hard time keeping up with the latest Android releases. Despite processing power capable of running even the newest revisions of Android, the limited storage on many devices ends up preventing many legacy devices from enjoying the latest versions. A few days ago, we talked about a Motorola Defy repartition script that enlarges the /system partition, allowing users to load bigger ROMs. A similar modification was made for the late-2011 HTC Pico by XDA Senior Member...

Anyone who's remotely interested in the topic of overclocking hardware will enjoy reading about the proper way to do so on NAND based devices that have PLL2 rather than PLL4. Notice my use of the term 'proper,' as right off the bat, the guide makes a reference to burning out the hardware if this is done wrong. The clarification between PLL4 and PLL2 overclocking is provided by XDA Senior Member Rootdefyxt320. He uses the analogy of Front Side Bus overclocking on...

The HTC Explorer, or Pico as it's known to friends, is a humble device sporting a 3.2" screen, 512 megs of RAM, and a slimmed down version of HTC Sense. Despite its small size and lower than average specs, it has still managed to acquire enough of a loyal user base and attention from the development community to secure itself a home here on XDA. In addition to the various Android-based custom ROMs for this device, there is now also...

There are quite a few excellent toolkits for HTC devices that we have covered in recent memory. They can be very useful tools by helping lower the cost of entry for users trying to safely and easily root their devices, install recoveries, and unlock bootloaders. Now, there are new toolkits for the HTC Explorer, HTC Desire V, and the HTC Desire S. XDA Recognized Developer hasoon2000, who has developed a large number of toolkits for HTC devices, has added the Explorer,...

It's truly impressive how dedicated the developers in our community are in working to keep old devices relevant with the latest OS updates, even after their manufacturers have ditched them entirely in favor of newer devices. In one such development, XDA Recognized Developer sakindia123 has ported the Linux 3.0.16 kernel to the HTC Explorer. This is great news for ROM developers since this will bring better support for ICS and Jelly Bean ROMs, in addition to better speed and security. At the moment,...

The HTC Explorer was never one of the most popular smartphones to grace the pages of XDA. The Explorer is a low end device that was released in late 2011. With only a 600 MHz processor and 512 MB RAM, it was never going to grab any headlines. This is what makes the recent high level of development activity on the device all the more impressive. First up, XDA Senior Member oblikas brings us TWRP. The popular touchscreen driven recovery system allows you to do...

I wrote an article two days ago slating HTCdev and their tardiness in GPL compliance. I was harsh and unforgiving, and quite right too. We’re not here to play devil's advocate or apologise on their behalf. The article listed phones the kernel source code hadn’t been published for. Some devices remain unpublished, but a small collection have been published today, including the Rezound, Amaze, Explorer, and Desire S. Well done, HTC, hopefully we'll see full GPL compliance soon. Please visit...

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